This reporting project was made possible by a grant from the Fourth Estate Fund.
You can find more from the series here: Rising Waters: A series focusing on the changing climate's impact on North Carolina's coast
Over the past couple of decades, many North Carolina beachfront houses have been lost to the Atlantic Ocean. Some have been torn down by owners. Others were destroyed in storms. And some have collapsed spectacularly — as seen on viral videos. It's not a new problem, but as climate change brings rising sea levels, the search for solutions becomes more pressing.
Residents watched Friday/last week/August 16th as a two-story saltbox-style house on the beach in Rodanthe collapsed and began tossing in the waves, as seen in a video posted by the Chicamacomico Banks Fire & Rescue. It was the seventh house to fall into the ocean near Cape Hatteras National Seashore over the past four years. Aerial photos show another dozen nearby at risk.
National Park Service superintendent Dave Hallac said many of these houses were built decades ago — away from the ocean, behind a series of dunes. But the beach and dunes have been swept away by Mother Nature.
"As erosion of our barrier islands has occurred over the last several decades, the distance between the Atlantic Ocean and the backyards of these homes, or even the home itself, has decreased substantially," Hallac said.
Rodanthe has gotten most of the headlines in recent years. But houses have been lost up and down the North Carolina coast, during storms or just from the encroaching sea. Mayor Debbie Smith of Ocean Isle Beach said entire streets have been lost in recent decades.
"As you travel down the beach, you will see that First Street ends and the ocean front road turns into Second Street and then Second Street ends and the oceanfront road turns into Third Street. Originally back in the '50s early '60s, First and Second street went all the way to the end," Smith said.
A 2022 report for the state Coastal Resources Commission estimated that 750 structures were at risk along the North Carolina coast, out of about 8,800 total. Aerial photos showed no dunes or vegetation between these buildings and the ocean.
Scientists say barrier islands like these all along the East Coast want to erode and shift naturally. Adding to the problem: Sea level has risen a foot in the past century along the Carolinas and Virginia coasts and it's accelerating. Federal climate experts predict sea levels could rise another foot by 2050.
"It's not uncommon for us to have a three to four meter per year erosion rate, in other words, 10 plus feet of beachfront just disappearing to the Atlantic Ocean on an annual basis," Hallac said.
Several factors drive that erosion, coastal scientist Braxton Davis said.
"You can have the movement of offshore sandbars and shoals and and inlet dynamics. All of these things come into play in determining what your erosion rate is at any one spot. But the overall trend is erosion and … you know, sea level rise just exacerbates all of these natural processes and natural shoreline changes," said Davis, who is executive director of the North Carolina Coastal Federation and led the state Division of Coastal Management for more than a decade before that.
Over the past two years, Davis and Hallac have led a state and federal task force studying threatened beachfront structures. A report is due Monday. Hallac said it will outline the problem and offer potential solutions — ranging from financial assistance for property owners to changes in regulations and insurance rules.
"We're going to be co-releasing a report with the state of North Carolina that, again, is just a list of ideas that we think can help to advance the issue. It's not necessarily a silver bullet. So hopefully these ideas can be further discussed by government agencies, and we can use it to develop other solutions.
In many oceanfront communities, pumping sand to rebuild beaches has become commonplace, to protect both the public beach and threatened homes and buildings. But every time the dredges and bulldozers come in, it costs tens of millions of dollars. And some officials worry that may not be sustainable. In Dare County, officials say they don't have the money to repeatedly renourish Rodanthe's beach. That means many houses are actually on the public beach — and at risk of collapsing or creating other hazards that force beach closures, said Hallac.
"They can present a safety impact if pieces of a deck or a stairway are falling off a house, or perhaps even the entire house collapses," Hallac said. "And then associated structures like septic systems, which treat the wastewater coming out of the house, frequently will break open and can leak raw, untreated sewage into the environment. So there's also a potential public health risk as well."
Some property owners have already taken the costly step of moving their homes. But vacant lots on or near the beach are few and the task is expensive. Other houses have been demolished. In a pilot project last year, the park service bought and tore down two houses at Rodanthe that were at risk of collapsing. The money came from the Land & Water Conservation Fund, which is fueled by profits from offshore oil and gas leases.
Davis said we need a variety of potential solutions and funding.
"It can't be a simple buyout program. It's not just regulatory in terms of some agency coming out and saying it's time to move your house away. There's insurance implications and legal implications that are quite complicated. So I think that it really takes a holistic approach, where you blend as many tools as you can," he said.
However it's done, getting houses off the beach is the best long-term solution, said coastal geologist Rob Young. He runs the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University.
"Too often we think of retreat and buyouts on the oceanfront as like the third rail of coastal management, and nobody wants to talk about it. But it's really time to talk about it. Because the idea that we can hold every single shoreline in place and protect every single parcel is just absurd," Young said.
As leaders try to hammer out solutions in the coming years, Davis said we shouldn't think of property owners as villains.
"A lot of these houses have been there a very long time. A lot of family memories are made," Davis said. "And some areas erode faster than others. Nature is very dynamic, and storms can be pretty unpredictable. We don't always know exactly how soon a structure is going to become threatened. So really, in order to handle this, we have to get away from thinking of this in some way that's going to penalize the property owners."
Davis says some recommendations in the report are already being tried, like buyouts. But other policy changes and permanent funding could take more haggling.
And there's still the question of where the money comes from. Representative Greg Murphy, who represents much of the North Carolina coast in Congress, filed a bill in June that would allow money from the National Flood Insurance Program to pay to demolish or move threatened structures — before they collapse.
